What is Love?
by Ayu Ohseki
Summary: Albedo and Jr. respectively voice their thoughts and emotions on a very tender subject. Dedicated to The Tesseract Seraph.


This is not meant to be slash, but if you want to look at it that way, go ahead. Yes, I purposely refrain from referring to anyone by name. No particular reason why, just a stylistic choice. This piece is a present to The Tesseract Seraph, to whom it is dedicated. Enjoy, Murky; I love you.

* * *

**What is Love?**

What is love?

Love is a farce. Love is madness. Love is an illusion to trap the weak-willed. How easily you can control someone with its sugar-and-arsenic promises! That's how you ensnared me, eh? Don't deny it. It's true, and you know it. We were meant to be together—we were originally one!—and it's because I wanted you to look at me and me alone that you always hurt me.

Love is pain: sweet, sweet, maddening—like the faint perfume on a dreaming virgin. Love will destroy you, entice you, seduce you, give you no _choice_ but to strip that virgin and ravage her tender innocence, lost in the thrill of desire, rip and tear until that faint scent has been replaced with a much stronger stench—just as maddening and twice as sweet, though!

That's why she died. I'm glad she did. She deserved it! How dare she seduce you? How dare she steal you from me? How dare you let her? Your love is mine. You are mine. You are _me_. Love is pure—pure obsession, that is. But even as you consume my thoughts, so much so that I can never totally despise what you adore, you remained blissfully ignorant of it. You should have known how lonely I was, how much you made me suffer. Our thoughts are joined, linked mind to mind with the rest of our kin, yet you still didn't notice. You should have known. Because there's no one else in this fetid joke of an existence as dear to me as you.

Love is you. You are my everything. I was born from you, cut down mercilessly from your back seven months into conception. Love was looking into your eyes and seeing myself reflected in them. Love was knowing I was as dear to you as you are to me. At least, I thought I knew. In the end it was all a lie; you were just using me—the right side of your chest, the other half of your very soul!—as a place-marker until something new and shiny caught your attention. No, the truth is you never loved me at all, did you? You'd never have tossed me aside like so much garbage if you had.

That's the reason for this hatred. You don't understand what true love is. That's why you were able to toss me aside so easily, so carelessly. Love is a lie, something wonderful that you perverted. Something wonderful that you _tainted_, just as I was tainted—except I am a far better man now than anything else you can conceive for it! Love is something that should have been mine alone. Love is you: you sustained me. Love is a poison: every time you ignored me or glared at me with such disdain, it killed me a little more. But I can't die! I'll always remain here, a ghost eternal, while you try to throw salt over your shoulder to ward me away. Ward me away, and then you frolic with all those whose passions are guttering candles to my raging sun—that wicked girl who pretended to be innocent, or our little brother, who's just as talented at hiding his malice behind a kind smile. They both stole you from me and turned you against me. And you don't even realize what they did. You even chose our black-hearted brother over me, never even noticing the shadow that follows his trail. You'd never notice your own monstrous shadow if I didn't force you to stare at it, either. You and I, we're monsters. We're _all_ monsters, but we two have a bond that no one else, not even our silver-tongued serpent of a brother, can comprehend.

Love is a curse. Pining after your love, always asking and only receiving when it suited your whim, withered me into a corpse. I can't die, yet I'm already dead. Isn't it funny? A rotted heart and an immortal body—and it was you who made me this way! Do you understand? All that you detest in me was wrought by your own hands. I can understand why you'd want to bury your mistakes like a cat buries its filth in sand, but I won't let you. You're a weak, pathetic coward, and I can't stand to see you sully yourself like that. Even if I'm useless to you, just a leech clinging to your back and hoping for a few cast-off morsels of affection, I won't let you hide your sins.

Love is dedication. Love is loyalty. Love is intense faith—a spiritual experience: almost like an audience with God. Of course, God is a heartless, sadistic bastard—so it fits, doesn't it? You're just as cruel. But no matter how much you thoughtlessly crush my heart under your heel, I'll return to you. Love is forgiveness, even if it's undeserved. I'll make you worthy of all you're meant to be, my heart. Let me take on all your sin, so that you can be as beautiful and strong and courageous as I know you to be. So what if I torture you a little? You deserve it. Besides, you're my older brother; you can handle the pain. I can, after all. What you hold dear becomes dear to me. Whatever agony wrenches your heart makes me weep. You are me, after all.

All the suffering I endure, I do so with a smile. All the daemons that assail me, I shrug off with a laugh. Everything I do, I do for you.

Because I love you.

* * *

What is love?

Love is...complicated. Love is layered. Love binds us together, even after we were torn apart. Whether I mean from each other's back or from each other's link, I'll let you decide. No—scratch that; it's both. We've got a really dualistic relationship, you know. They say love and hate are just flip sides of the same coin, and I believe it. No one and nothing else can rile me up like you do.

Love is what keeps you in my thoughts, even though remembering you tears me up. Love is what keeps me up crying at night; love is what gives me nightmares. Sometimes I wake up half-delirious and stumble to the bathroom, and when I see my reflection dark in the mirror, I think it's you for one heart-stopping second. I reach out to touch you, to feel your warmth against my palm—and all that meets the tattoo there is a smooth, cool pane of glass.

I feel so alone then. It's the worst feeling ever. I'd pick an eternity of you mocking me and tormenting me and everything over a single moment of that loneliness. At least then I'd be near you. You've always been a part of me, even now, and though I fear it, I never want to let it go. But that's exactly what I did, huh? That's why the right side of my chest aches so badly. Love is regret. And you, you'll never let me forget it, will you? You won't stop hurting me, either.

As your older brother, I always tried to look out for you, but you clung so much it got tiresome. It was annoying. But looking back, at the same time, it's because you were like that that I could be strong. You gave me someone to protect. So did she. Maybe that's why I cared for her so much... Because she supported me and believed in me, just like you did. So did (and does) our other little brother, but that's different. He supported and believed, but he was so level-headed and self-sufficient that he didn't need anything in return. The few times he _has_ needed protection, it's on a level totally beyond me, and I end up feeling so weak and useless. That's why you're so important to me. It's not just that you're my other half. I need you.

Love isn't you. Love isn't me, either. Love is the both of us together, hand in hand, thought in thought. I know I got mad at you sometimes when you acted like an idiot, but isn't that what brothers are for? That didn't mean I suddenly thought you were worthless. You were and are a part of me, even if sometimes I don't like to admit it. The way you acted, though, I wonder if you believe otherwise. Or maybe you just wanted to make my life difficult. You'd cry even when I encouraged you. Even though we were linked together, sometimes I just didn't understand what you wanted from me. A lot of people are important to me, but there's no one who can match or replace you. Doesn't that mean anything?

Love is terrifying. I know that we're halves of the same whole, but you could get so jealous when I wasn't paying attention to you and enraged when I was upset that I was scared you might hurt someone. You're my responsibility. You always have been. That's why I always got so—so _angry_ whenever you went off the deep end. It's the same even now. I don't want you doing horrible things because of me.

Love is destructive. Sure, I was afraid—but I wanted to protect everyone. I wanted to keep everyone from dying, but in the end, I killed our kin with my own carelessness. I even tore you off my back and cast you aside. I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I never meant for things to turn out that way. If I could, I'd turn back time and fix everything. Maybe I could've, back then. But at the moment, I was too scared to think of anything but trying to save myself, and then the one brother of ours that that monstrosity _didn't_ snatch away from me. I know I'm a coward. That doesn't mean I'm proud of it.

Love is sorrow. And yet, love is joy. When the ones we love are in pain, we're in pain too—we want to take that pain away, and if we can't, we can barely stand it. But on the other hand, when the ones we love are happy, then we can share in that happiness and soar. Someone said that we're all angels born with only one wing, and it's only by flying hand in hand that we can get anywhere. That's exactly how I feel about you.

Love...I don't even know. But you've got it, all right? And you never lost it. I know, one day, I'll have to face you and settle things once and for all. Believe me when I say I don't want to. If God could just give you back to me the way you were, before everything started spiraling down and then just got shot to hell, I'd never ask for anything else again. But I know that's not going to happen, no matter how hard I wish for it.

I know what I should do. I know what I have to do, but I dread doing it with every inch of our soul.

Because I love you.


End file.
